A common model of selling and delivering, or retailing, goods and/or services in a wide geographical area is to have a plurality of local or regional sales organizations. The local organizations cover each a different country or a specific area, for example a part of a continent. The local organizations can have a varying degree of responsibility in locally organizing the actual sales and delivery of goods and/or services to consumers or other clients.
Selling of automotive products, for example cars, accessories and/or parts thereof, can be mentioned as an example of a global retail organization where a great number of local organizations, possible smaller intermediate organizations, and typically thousands of dealers are involved. Thus the manner how automotive products dealerships can be organized will be used in this description as an example of a global retail organization.
In a typical sales organization for automotive products a manufacturer with global markets communicates with a national or regional higher level sales organization in each country or region. The head offices of the national organizations then communicate either directly with dealers in different areas, or with a further organizational layer such as a state level sales organization. Even the national level is then typically divided into a plurality zones or areas, each typically with a number of sales units known as dealers. In the sales organization information is passed horizontally between the different levels.
A large multilayered organization typically requires substantial amount of resources to ensure that all those who need information coming from the top do receive it and also that any feedback is properly processed, such as filtered, and that any important information is not lost in the system but is fed back to the top level. Ensuring that appropriate information and training is communicated to correct recipients in timely fashion can require a considerable amount of administration and management resources. For example, managing of product launches and/or new product variations or modifications may require communication through multiple hierarchical layers, each equipped with their own systems. The communication may involve a number of different data processing systems, each introducing complexity to the system.
For example, the local retailing units are typically equipped with their own computerised information systems. In automotive products industry these are often referred to as dealer management systems. The local and intermediate level systems can be provided by a number of different suppliers and based on different software and hardware component, protocols and so on. The manufacturer's systems are typically based on big mainframe computers which may not be well suited for communication with distributed data systems. This all affects the interoperability between the systems in different locations and levels.
Access to higher level systems can be restricted so that the lower levels of an organization may have only limited access rights, if any rights at all, to the higher level systems. Even if the access rights are given for all relevant personnel, information may be obtained only in a particular location, for example via a computer terminal in the local sales office. This can inhibit the sales personnel from even trying to access the information, for example in the middle of sales negotiations in a showroom or forecourt. This can mean that the front line sales staff cannot easily access data available e.g. at the manufacturer's databases, in particular when there is an immediate need for the data for ensuring proper understanding of the product and efficient sales. There may also be interoperability problems and delays in communications between the various different local systems and the manufacturer's mainframe computers, which can further discourage efficient use of the data systems.
As a result the communication channel can be long, complex and difficult to use. There may also be severe interoperability, delay and engagement problems in communications. In addition to introducing complexity and delays to communications from the top to the bottom and vice versa, information and messages may get distorted, send to wrong recipients, and even worse, lost.
Occasions such as new product launches, for example introduction of a new car model, sales campaigns, special offers and so on can involve a considerable amount of communications between various organizational layers, travel and training sessions, and can therefore be very costly. More communications is also required because product life spans are getting shorter. There is also an increasing demand to make modifications to existing products and add new variations in relatively short notices. The inflexible management systems and multilayered communication channels may cause unnecessary delay in the communications of relevant information in such situations. The frontline sales personnel should nevertheless receive enough accurate information and training as quickly as possible to ensure smooth introduction of the new product lines, modifications and variations. The front line sales personnel should also be able to quickly feed back information of any feedback they receive from the clients and of any other observations they might have concerning the new or somehow altered products. Therefore anything that could shorten the communication channel, reduce the complexity and improve the quality of communications over the different hierarchy levels would be desired.